One of the happiest periods in my life resulted from my writing a fan letter.

Sometime in 1961, I heard a broadcast of the Symphony No. 2 by Humphrey
Searle conducted by Norman Del Mar. Hitherto, I had only responded to
conventional classical music and adopted the erroneous attitude that music
of the twentieth century was tuneless rubbish. Sadly it is an
attitude that many so-called music lovers tenaciously hold. I cannot pass
judgement upon such Philistines for I was one once. And, to think that, in
my ignorance, I dismissed such geniuses as Bartók and Stravinsky.
Today, in my thankfully enlightened condition, I am dismayed that self-appointed
music cabals both disparage and assassinate modern music and
deliberately blind themselves to its proven greatness and yet, conversely,
attack others who display the evident faults and crass weakness in the music
of their revered composers. This ethos can be encapsulated in a remark I
once heard: Bach can do no wrong; Bartók can do no right!

I wrote to Mr Searle with what was clearly the unbridled enthusiasm of an
adolescent. I did not expect a reply. He would be both too busy and too important
to bother with an immature teenager. But, within two days, I received his
gracious letter telling me to advise him the next time I was to be in London.
I had no plans to visit the hagridden capital of England but I answered his
letter to say that I would be in London on a Saturday in a fortnights
time. He wrote back at once telling me to visit him on that particular afternoon.

I travelled on the Friday night and stayed with Mr and Mrs Alphonso Benedetto
in Westbourne Terrace, Paddington. I walked from Waterloo station as I was
fearful of travelling on the underground. The following day, I walked to
St Johns Wood and knocked on the door of 44 Ordnance Hill. A flustered
46-year-old man came to answer it in his dark suit and Paisley tie. He seemed
surprised to see someone so young. He led the way up some stairs to his Bohemian
studio littered with scores, books and pencils. Expressing his reticent pleasure
that I had enjoyed his piece, he said nothing more about his own music. When
I tried to obtain any details of his own work he would reply by extolling
some virtue in Bach, Beethoven or Liszt. His speech was breathless. He was
somewhat shy and this was reflected in his precise matter. But he was kind.
He poured himself a drink and offered me one before realising my age and
so handed me a mineral water.

He talked about musicians he knew and in those hours I learned more about
music than I had in seven years of learning. He showed me how Schubert composed,
leaving lengthy gaps to be filled in later and how this style of composition
was structural suicide. This was demonstrated when Humphrey played a movement
from a Schubert Sonata in D. Over half of the movement was nothing more than
one long expanse of broken chords. He went on to explain that another composer
who also wrote some good tunes was Tchaikovsky and he posed the question
as to whether he was really a composer of grand light music. It should not
be taken that this was an uninformed or prejudiced attack on either Schubert
or Tchaikovsky. We went on to discuss Alkan and Webern. Humphrey presented
a very coherent case for continuity in music and expressed concern at music
that was too long and could become tedious. "How can you evaluate a symphony
lasting about an hour when some of it is very good and long stretches of
it are ordinary, or poor?"

Another interesting feature was that he always called me Mr Wright and never
David. It was not that he was unfriendly but that he treated me with respect.

I visited him several times and accompanied him to the Royal College of Music.
I walked in the Stanford Room where the Irish composer, Charles Villiers
Stanford taught for forty years. I examined the photographs of eminent musicians
including a very young Herbert Howells playing the piano in his nightgown.

As I began to know Humphrey I realised that the words music and
classical were often wrongly applied. When the pop group, the
Beatles saturated the musical world, they were hailed as marvellous
musicians ... and, yet, at the time, they could not even read musical notation.
How could they possibly equate with Bach or Mozart? We were highly censured
for being snobs. The truth of the matter was that we did not
look down on people for liking pop music; that was both their choice and
prerogative. The truth was, and remains, that there is no comparison between
Bach and the Beatles. They are the antitheses of each other. Bach was a genius.

We were not snobs. The first concert Humphrey took me to was not of Beethoven
or Brahms, but Duke Ellington, which concert left me spellbound. With Searle,
I met many famous musicians.

Alan Rawsthorne was an interesting character, congenial one moment, and moody
the next. He was something of a poser but did not exude any real encouragement
or inspiration. I did have some lessons from him. He was preoccupied with
a strictly classical approach to music, reminding me of the complex contrapuntal
textures of Bach which, although clever and perhaps cerebral, seemed to destroy
spontaneity. Rawsthorne was a lazy man. All his compositions were the outcome
of cerebral activity and never the heart. He, like many others, churned music
out and it was often dull and passive. On the other hand, Humphreys
music was tough, strikingly clever and his heart was never far from any score
of his. There was a variety of emotive content in his work ranging from slapstick
humour to grim phycological feelings although, often, they were partially
concealed by his expert craftsmanship.

Benjamin Britten was the rudest man that I have ever met. He had an unnatural
and pronounced arrogance that stifled any room when he was present. He was
scathing about other British composers and, on the rare occasions when he
did say something positive about one of them, he immediately followed it
up with a snide remark. He liked Elgar because he said that they had both
come from the same ultra-superior stock. This so enraged another composer
that he answered Britten by saying, "You and Elgar do have a lot in common.
You both toady to the royalty and to the aristocracy. As for me, I could
not live in someones backside!" Britten criticised Beethoven without
mercy; he regarded Brahms as an amateur and he actually said that there had
only been two really great composers in England, namely Purcell and himself.
He staggered me by stating that he liked Schubert because he was effeminate
and it was only when I learned that Britten was homosexual that I began to
understand that remark. Britten hated conductors and musicians who refused
to revere him. He was both hateful and cruel to many professionals. He had
an abnormal predilection for choirboys. He once announced that he sometimes
went to church to see their pretty faces. He had no manners,
either. He would noisily emit wind and actually pose to do so. Later I was
to discover that he had been horrid to Humphrey and I was told this by his
friends who came to visit him and to make a fuss of his cat.

I did not care for Elisabeth Lutyens. Her bad language was legendary and
I could not fathom her eccentricity. However, I believe she was a tortured
soul and her music was interesting and, through her, I met the pianist, Katharina
Welpe and encountered the music of her father, Stefan Welpe.

Peter Racine Fricker, like Rawsthorne, was something of a toper. Like Humphrey,
he had a wonderful capacity for friendship. He helped me with the fugue and
I spent some happy hours with him. I shall always be grateful to Peter for
introducing me to the music of his teacher, Matyas Seiber and revealing from
his exemplary scores many fascinating elements.

Before I had left my teenage years, Humphrey had become professor of composition
at RCM and I attended his classes. I presented him with my own Symphony
no 1 which I had entitled Rosalind. It was not his style and it
was tonal. Nonetheless we performed it with the College orchestra and they
genuinely liked it.

I met the eighteen-year-old Nicola LeFanu who had just written her Soliloquy
for oboe. She was interested in experimental sounds and she was very
fashionable. Her short skirts were not as risky as those of Jacqueline du
Pré who had to negotiate a cello between her legs. I saw her and Daniel
Barenboim, whom she later married, perform Beethoven. I also saw her play
the Elgar Cello Concerto, a work which I subsequently examined in
the minutest detail. But most of all I was enthralled with the Aeolian String
Quartet (Sydney Humphries, Raymond Keenlyside, Margaret Major and a fine
cellist, Derek Simpson). I adored Mendlessohns E minor,
Haydns G major Op 77 no 1, Beethovens C major,
Rasoumovsky and the Bartôk quartets were striking discourses.

As I did not play an orchestral instrument, Humphrey suggested that I take
up the timpani and we went to the other college, the Royal Academy
of Music where I met the famous percussionist, James Blades. Here I rolled
my wrists, learned precise tuning and how to make the kettledrums roar. The
pedal timpani were exciting and their astonishing range of sound effects
motivated my desire for mastery of percussion.

I was allowed to play in the RCM orchestra and this is where I met Sir Adrian
Boult who was a humble man. He would sometimes conduct us while he was still
wearing his bicycle clips. He conducted us in Brahms Symphony no
1 and the Alto Rhapsody in which the superlative Sybil Michelow
was the soloist. Here was a contralto vastly superior to the venerated Kathleen
Ferrier, and this led me to appreciate that the greatest musicians are not
always the famous ones! Today, I prefer Howard Keel to Pavarotti but, as
far as I am concerned, the finest tenor of all times was Jussi Bjorling.

Boult gave us lessons in vocal and choral singing and I was privileged to
sing in his choir. We sang Messiah - a truly spiritual experience
as well as a musical one. There was a Haydn Mass and Brahms Song
of Destiny. When a performance of Elgars Dream of Gerontius
was scheduled I said that I did not want to do it. He replied, "Neither do
I," and, seeing the surprise on my face, he made a famous statement which
he later repeated on national television. He said, "If Elgars music
is played badly, then you blame the orchestra; if it is played well, you
blame Elgar!" Hitherto, I had thought that conductors only performed music
that they liked! I still had a lot to learn.

Humphrey was not fond of long-winded music, disliking the longueurs of Elgar,
Mahler and Bruckner although he found a very great amount to admire in the
latter composers. "Long music has to sustain interest," he would say, "and
so a composer must be original and have something different to say. Sibelius
is an excellent example of an original mind." He went further and explained
the musical device of the sequence and how this repetition of a passage at
a higher or lower level of pitch must achieve something and not just be a
means of padding out music. Boult demonstrated some tedious sequences
in Elgar and that boring descending one towards the end of Tchaikovskys
1812 Overture. Conversely, he demonstrated how the sequences in
Shostakovich always had a purpose and led somewhere.

I met Sir William Walton who was a most likeable man, although I have my
doubts as to whether he was the best composer of his own music. He would
conduct rehearsals minus his jacket and his trousers would go up and down
on the elasticity of his braces revealing the top of his underpants. He hated
the suggestion that he was Elgars successor; he told us plainly that
he did not respond favourably to Elgars music. I remember one unforgettable
remark that he made to us. He said, "I believe that Shostakovich is the greatest
composer of the twentieth century and at the other end of the spectrum there
is Elgar." I asked Walton if the stories were true that he had had extensive
music lessons in 1946-8 from Humphrey Searle. "Yes, I did," he replied, "but
we did not broadcast this about. Humphrey was painfully modest and I had
had no formal composition tutor, he did not want to be known as my mentor.
I could not have continued composing had it not been for Humphrey. He was
the finest teacher anyone could have!"

Another interesting character was Sir Arthur Bliss who was the Master of
the Queens Music. After a particular concert, we congregated in a pub
and he announced that he was going to buy us all a drink. We gave in our
orders eagerly but ended up buying our own as he had no money with him.

I was introduced to Pierre Boulez after a promenade concert probably in 1964
when he conducted Messaiens Chronochromie, his own Le Soleil
des Eaux, before its revision, and Debussys Images. The
soloists were Jane Manning, John Huchinson and John Noble. Backstage, I found
Boulez courteous but cold. Sir Malcolm Sargent was a charming man; his conducting
was sometimes on the brisk side earning him the nickname Flash Harry, but
his facial expressions told us exactly what he wanted and he always kept
to the score that he was conducting.

The most famous musician that I encountered was Stravinsky. The incident
is almost unbelievable. He sat himself at the piano and improvised on a
well-known British hymn tune. This surprised us, but the sounds he produced
and the wonderfully-integrated improvisation, full of colour and expertly
judged nuances was stunning. I shook his hand and asked him what was his
favourite composition of his own. He reversed the question and asked me to
tell him the work of his I most admired. "I dont know," I struggled.
"Nor do I," he replied genially.

Humphrey had so many friends and not all were musicians. I was introduced
to James Mason, another cat lover and I admired his velvet voice. He also
made an unforgettable remark when he said, "All actors are schizophrenics
or hypocrites, or both. We never know who we really are!" And it was a sheer
delight to meet Margaret Rutherford.

Occasionally we went to the BBC. Once, in the canteen, I saw Robert Wagner
who had been a favourite film star of mine since I was a boy. The waitress
was equally surprised to see him and poured soup into his lap. He did not
say much but he struck me as being potentially argumentative. My most abiding
memory was that these famous and glamourous stars were usually unfulfilled
and unhappy souls. They had fame and fortune but did not know who they
were. The only actors who I met that seemed content and had not stopped
belonging to the human race were Robert Ryan, a very brave man, and Gregory
Peck.

Although an external student at RCM, I met fellow students from all parts
of the world. One was an attractive Vietnamese girl. She had a kind, thin
oriental face, not one of those bulbous or cruel-featured visages. She had
long, straight, shiny black hair, dark eyes and a captivating smile. Her
name was Ngoc but I found that impossible to say. As her other name was Niash,
I called her Jacqui, the connection being the actor J. Carroll Niash who
had played the Chinese Detective, Charlie Chan.

Jacqui was a cellist and of all the students she heard play she chose me
as her accompanist. We played the Beethoven and the Brahms sonatas regularly.
Our music sessions would extend into the early hours of the morning as her
living quarters were close to mine in Paddington.

We were in a different world with our music. The ghastly din of London traffic,
the poor Asian communities eating dog and cat food straight from the tins
in Hyde Park, the gross immorality of Soho and the appallingly arrogant
sophistication of Mayfair and Belgravia had no meaning in the uncontaminated
world of Beethoven. This was reality, not the streets of London, the rat
race of dog eat dog. There was Jacqui with her long, high-collared dresses
and that mellifluous cello close to her body and myself at the Steinway
absolutely at one with her.

As with Rosalind, there was not sexual involvement. Yet we were in love with
each other and the other bond was music. In each others company, we
were one. We never argued or spoke sharply to each other. We had only to
look at each other and know exactly what we were thinking; we were soul mates.

I began to work on my Cello Concerto in 1966 which was dedicated to
her. Sometimes, she and her friend, Sally Wendkos went to a local swimming-pool
but only when it was a session for ladies only. Jacqui felt that her body
should not be exposed to any man and, although she was not a Moslem, she
believed this teaching passionately and she knew that I felt this way. I
remember that she came back early one evening and said that she did not swim
as there was a male lifeguard on duty as the usual female staff were sick!
Because of her, I took an interest in the Vietnam war and there were times
when we were in the city streets that we suffered verbal abuse. Jacqui was
called a geek and a VC but she took it all, without
complaint.

I had completed the large central slow movement of my Cello Concerto.
We rehearsed it with the orchestra and at the end several players were openly
and unashamedly in tears, including some of the young fellows. Humphrey said,
"I wonder if people will like it; it is very deep and tugs at the heartstrings!"

"Is it no good?" I asked.

"Intensely beautiful," he said, "more a document of humanity ..."

Britten called it poncy music. He really was a nasty piece of work. Humphrey
said, "He likes it but he is jealous of any and everyone elses success."

But Brittens remarks had cut me to the quick. I began work on my
Symphony no 2. There was going to be nothing effeminate about this.
It would employ saxophones, a flexatone, a guitar played with a bow, a wind
machine, water gongs and, at the end, a sheet of glass would be smashed.
It was lampooned without mercy but the students loved it, particularly the
send-up of a theme from the Elgar Cello Concerto. It was daring and
technically difficult to play. Several students said it was unstuffy
music and gloriously non-pretentious.

There was to be a revival of this piece at the College in 1975 but the director,
an egocentric self-styled arbiter of music dismissed it as rubbish.
Well, I suppose he should know; he is responsible for material, arrangements
and performances of music that is decidedly naff.

One conductor, who had been a clarinet student at RCM and was to make a name
for himself as an opera conductor after leaving one of the BBCs provincial
orchestras, was an absolute pain. He was a most unsympathetic
accompanist-conductor and regularly drowned the soloist. "If
they cannot compete with me or my orchestra, then they are not worthy of
me," he would say. I am aware that many international soloists refused to
appear with him. Nonetheless, the conductor was later to be highly praised
for his Berlioz and Sibelius. He was an annoying show-off and, as I write
this, I am thinking of another conductor, twenty-eight years his junior,
who is following in his steps in the mendacious school of conceited conductors.

Not so Bryden Thomson, the best British conductor I met. He had studied with
two first-class but very different conductors namely Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt
and Igor Markevich. Schmidt-Isserstedt had conducted in Norway, as did
Jack Thomson, having studied with Franz Schreker whereas Markevich
had been a pupil of Boulanger. Jack brought a wonderful clarity into his
performances and was an honest conductor. "If this is what the composer wrote,"
he would say, "this is what we will give him." He never took a score for
granted. He would study it labouriously. He was a marvellous orchestral
accompanist which may explain why BBC television asked him to conduct the
Concerto competition in the first Young Musician of the Year contest. In
the last years of his life, he rediscovered Bax for all of us and made superb
recordings of many fine British scores - his Walton Symphony no 1
and Vaughan-Williams Fourth will never be surpassed.

A fellow student, whose name I cannot remember, began writing a Cello Sonata
for Jacqui and me to play. Her composition of this piece was greatly hindered
by her obvious but inexplicable infatuation with me. She pressed me to take
her to a particular concert but I declined. If I took anyone it would be
Ngoc. I did purchase two tickets but on the day of the concert Jacqui was
not very well and suggested that I took this other girl. I said that I could
not as it would be disloyal to Jacqui but she replied that she trusted me
and I should not miss Peter Katin who was to be the soloist.

I arrived in a taxi to collect this fellow student. She emerged from the
house dressed like a film star. Her hair was up and decorated with flowers
and a few miniature beads. She wore a knee-length black dress with a low
back, barely black tights and black shoes. She was quietly perfumed. She
snuggled into me in the taxi and at the concert which I found discomfiting.
To make matters worse, all the music was of the romantic variety. Katin played
Rachmaninovs Piano Concerto no 2 which did not succumb to the
slushy realms of Tchaikovskys Pathetique Symphony which concluded
the concert. My companion sobbed silently at the excessive sentimentality
of this final work.

She hailed a taxi and I expected her to get out at her address and I to proceed
to Westbourne Terrace. But she asked me in an she was not somebody you could
easily refuse.

She flopped in a chair opposite me. It was not tights she was wearing but
stockings. She extricated herself from the chair in an unladylike fashion.
"Pour yourself a drink," she said, "Im going upstairs to freshen up."

I was apprehensive. I wanted to open the door, flee down the corridor, open
the front door and disappear into the dark autumn night. But how would I
explain myself at College the following morning?

She was gone for what seemed ages but eventually appeared. I nearly had a
heart attack. Her hair was down and her eyes smouldered. She wore a very
short red slip.

"Are you ready?" she purred.

"Ready? For what?" I panicked.

She crossed her arms at the elbows and took the bottom of the red garment
and pulled it over her head, dropping it to the floor. Petrified with shock
for a moment I saw her playing with the ties of her white silky underwear.

No longer reduced to stone, I ran out into the night. I was faster along
the Bayswater road than the traffic. I was exhausted when I arrived at the
Benedettos. I had a lot of different feelings. I had never seen a woman
like that before; I had seen many dead ones in the mortuary but here was
a vibrant woman doing what women do so well, ensnaring men. What was going
to happen? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Would she shout rape and
circulate some accusation around the College in the morning?

I had little time to worry. Alphonso had a message for me. Jacqui was ill
and wanted me to go to her; her landlady was away. Although it was late I
summoned a taxi. Knowing where she kept the key, although I had not used
it before, I let myself in. I called her name, no answer. I went upstairs
and tried several doors, eventually finding the right one and entering, finding
Jacqui curled up on a bed dressed in her nightgown. I picked her up and put
her into bed. Her lovely face was stained with tears. She threw her arms
around me and said my name as only she ever did. "David. Hold me."

I held her close. I felt her trembling and heard her sobbing.

"Do I call a doctor? Is there anything I can do?"

She nodded. "Kiss me," she said.

I did. Her breath and mouth tasted and smelled foul, but it did not matter.
Her sobbing subsided. Then she went limp. And she was dead. And in my arms.
I held her for a long time. I did not want to let her go. Eventually, I did
and called the police.

The news was at the College the next morning together with details of my
involvement so the threat of the seductress was eliminated. She was most
upset as well.

There was a post-mortem and an inquest to which I went. Ngoc had died of
candida which she had contracted in the swimming-pool. A week before her
death she had undergone a thorough medical, cervical smear test and the inquest
were given the information that she died a virgin. How insensitive evidence
can be.

The swimming-pool was condemned and closed. Its owners were brought before
the Court and fined. I did not attend the legal proceedings. I cursed
swimming-pools, the Americans for their cruel involvement in Vietnam and
condemned the metropolis itself. I have only walked those streets a few times
since the fateful October of 1967 and always with the crushing fear of a
momentous tragedy.

Nor could I make music my career after that. My heart was as heavy as lead
that had burst through into my soul. I died that day too. I have never had
real confidence since.

I still have the recording of Jacqui playing my Cello Concerto. I
have heard it twice in thirty years. Hearing it causes me far too much pain
... and yet this is all I have of her. And it is not enough.

Humphrey came to me. His first wife had died unexpectedly on Christmas day
in 1957. He shook my hand and held it strongly for quite a while. We saw
the pain in each others eyes.

"Sometimes words are not enough," he said.

And so, the happy period of my life came to an end with one of the saddest
events. And things were not going to improve, either.

Outside my window the refreshing rain is falling and a young bird is singing.